Hydrogen

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Genetic modification gives major boost to algal hydrogen production. Hydrogen has the potential to be a clean and sustainable fuel, but realizing that potential relies of clean and sustainable methods to produce it.

Algae might fit the bill, but it only produces hydrogen in small amounts. Now, using genetic engineering, researchers at Tel Aviv University (TAU) have modified the organism, which could enable it to be used to mass-produce hydrogen on an industrial scale. Hydrogen might burn clean, producing only water as a by-product, but currently over 90 percent of the hydrogen produced in the United States comes from fossil fuels. Although algae can produce hydrogen using photosynthesis, it was believed that this only occurred for a few minutes at dawn, resulting in limited amounts of the gas. But tests by a team led by Dr. Further tests revealed that the enzyme hydrogenase, which breaks down in the presence of oxygen, was integral to algae's hydrogen production. Dr.
Self-contained prototype brings artificial photosynthesis a step closer to commercial reality.

While solar cells and wind turbines are the devices many people will think of for off-grid electricity production, the development of practical artificial photosynthesis for the creation of hydrogen via solar-powered water splitting could radically alter the way we produce energy locally.

As part of the on-going pursuit of this goal, researchers from Forschungszentrum Jülich claim to have created a working, compact, self-contained artificial photosynthesis system that could form the basis for practical commercial devices. Photosynthesis in plants and certain types of algae is the process where light energy is transformed into chemical energy to synthesize simple carbohydrates from carbon dioxide and water. In artificial photosynthesis, or photoelectrochemical water splitting, solar energy is used to split hydrogen molecules from water (or even further refine it into methane in some systems).

"That doesn't sound like much," said Bugra Turan. The video below shows the system in action.
Latest bionic leaf now 10 times more efficient than natural photosynthesis. Over the last few years, great strides have been made in creating artificial leaves that mimic the ability of their natural counterparts to produce energy from water and sunlight.

In 2011, the first cost-effective, stable artificial leaves were created, and in 2013, the devices were improved to self-heal and work with impure water. Now, scientists at Harvard have developed the "bionic leaf 2.0," which increases the efficiency of the system well beyond nature's own capabilities, and used it to produce liquid fuels for the first time. The project is the work of Harvard University's Daniel Nocera, who led the research teams on the previous versions of the artificial leaf, and Pamela Silver, Professor of Biochemistry and Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School. Like the previous versions, the bionic leaf 2.0 is placed in water and, as it absorbs solar energy, it's able to split the water molecules into their component gases, hydrogen and oxygen. Source: Harvard. Hybrid artificial photosynthesis technique produces hydrogen and methane. Not content with using hybrid artificial photosynthesis to turn CO2 emissions into plastics and biofuel, researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) now claim to have produced an enhanced system that uses water and solar energy to generate hydrogen, which is in turn used to produce methane, the main element of natural gas, from carbon dioxide.

Generating such gases from a renewable resource may one day help bolster, or even replace, fossil fuel resources extracted from dwindling sub-surface deposits. Simply put, the process of photosynthesis turns light energy into chemical energy.
New record energy efficiency for artificial photosynthesis. As the world moves towards developing new avenues of renewable energy, the efficiencies of producing fuels such as hydrogen must increase to the point that they rival or exceed those of conventional energy sources to make them a viable alternative.

Solar-powered hydrogen generation using two of the most abundant elements on Earth. One potential clean energy future requires an economical, efficient, and relatively simple way to generate copious amounts of hydrogen for use in fuel-cells and hydrogen-powered vehicles.

Often achieved by using electricity to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, the ideal method would be to mine hydrogen from water using electricity generated directly from sunlight without the addition of any external power source. Hematite – the mineral form of iron – used in conjunction with silicon has shown some promise in this area, but low conversion efficiencies have slowed research. Now scientists have discovered a way to make great improvements, giving hope to using two of the most abundant elements on earth to efficiently produce hydrogen. In this vein, researchers from Boston College, UC Berkeley, and China's University of Science and Technology have hit upon the technique of "re-growing" the hematite, so that a smoother surface is obtained along with a higher energy yield.
Extracting Hydrogen From Plants Could Lower Fuel Costs. Extracting Hydrogen From Plants Could Lower Fuel Costs (8)Apr-08-13 Researchers have developed a way to extract large quantities of hydrogen from plants, opening the door to a new low-cost, environmentally friendly fuel source.

Developed by a team at Virginia Tech, the technique involves using a combination of a polyphosphate and a blend of enzymes to extract hydrogen from any biological element that contains xylose—which can be found in every plant. The process is also more efficient and eco-friendly that conventional hydrogen extraction methods. The team hopes to bring the technology to market within three years. More Info:
Hydrogen Harvesting Device Stores Hydrogen in a Sponge. Hydrogen Harvesting Device Stores Hydrogen in a Sponge (3)Sep-15-14 A water-splitting device that stores hydrogen in a sponge could one day allow hydrogen fuel to be harvested on Mars—or provide power to remote areas here on Earth.

Currently, creating hydrogen fuel from water requires a great deal of electricity. Renewable energy sources are not able to meet the need, since their power can be intermittent, and the recent 'artificial leaf' technology is dangerous to scale up. The new harvesting device, created by Professor Lee Cronin and his team at Glasgow University, can operate on a single burst of power and still harvest more hydrogen gas than its contemporaries. It works by zapping the water with a single jolt of power to release the oxygen, after which a silicon-based chemical mediator acts as a 'liquid sponge' to absorb the loose protons and electrons.
New Coating Helps Usher in Artificial Leaves. New Coating Helps Usher in Artificial Leaves (2)Mar-10-15 A new coating developed by a team at Caltech has brought us a step closer to artificial leaves able to harness sunlight to create hydrogen fuel.

The artificial leaf under development by the Caltech team is made up of two electrodes (a photoanode and a photocathode) and a membrane. While the photoanode harvests the sun to oxidize water molecules, the photocathode recombines the resulting protons and electrons to create hydrogen gas. Meanwhile, the membrane keeps the gases separated and collects it for delivery. The technology has been in development for some time, but has been hindered by the electrodes' tendency to rust when exposed to water—and creating a functional protective coating has proved difficult.

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Record efficiency for converting solar energy to hydrogen without rare metals. Using solar energy to split water into its component parts, thereby allowing the solar energy to be stored as hydrogen fuel, generally involves one of two methods: using photoelectrochemical cells to directly split the water, or using solar cells to produce electricity to power an electrolyzer that separates the water molecules.

One problem associated with the latter method is that it currently relies on rare metals. But now scientists from Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland have managed to do so using common materials, and have achieved a record solar energy to hydrogen conversion efficiency in the process. In addition to the nickel and iron catalysts used for the electrodes in their electrolyzer, the researchers are using solar absorbers made of perovskite – another abundant material – in the solar cells.

Could moly sulfide be the key to cheaper hydrogen production?
Chemical engineers have found a 30-year-old recipe that stands to make future hydrogen production cheaper and greener. The recipe has led researchers to a way to liberate hydrogen from water via electrolysis using molybdenum sulfide – moly sulfide for short – as the catalyst in place of the expensive metal platinum. While hydrogen is relatively abundant here on Earth, it is generally bound to either carbon or oxygen to form methane and water respectively.
Silicon/nickel water splitter could lead to cheaper hydrogen. While not a primary source of energy, hydrogen, because of its large energy density, provides a vehicle with which to store and transport energy.

Photoelectrochemical (PEC) cells can use sunlight to sustainably split water into hydrogen and oxygen, but efficient PEC materials tend to corrode rapidly in use. A Stanford research group has been studying this problem, and has found that depositing a thin layer of nickel atoms on a silicon PEC electrode allows it to operate for over 80 hours with no sign of corrosion. If you want to harvest the energy from sunlight on a large scale, looking into using silicon would be a good start. Cheap and workable owing largely to the massive infrastructure built to support the fabrication of integrated circuits, silicon can absorb from the near-IR into the UV, a range that covers the peak wavelengths of the Sun's radiation. Silicon solar cells have attained as much as 30 percent conversion of sunlight into electricity. So his group tried it out.
Self-healing “artificial leaf” produces energy from dirty water.

Back in 2011, scientists reported the creation of the “world’s first practical artificial leaf” that mimics the ability of real leaves to produce energy from sunlight and water. Touted as a potentially inexpensive source of electricity for those in developing countries and remote areas, the leaf’s creators have now given it a capability that would be especially beneficial in such environments – the ability to self heal and therefore produce energy from dirty water.

While the leaf mimics a real leaf’s ability to produce energy from sunlight and water, it doesn’t mimic the method real leaves rely on, namely photosynthesis. Instead, as described by Daniel G. Nocera, Ph.D. who led the research team, the artificial leaf is actually a simple wafer of silicon coated in a catalyst that, when dropped into a jar of water and exposed to sunlight, breaks down water into its hydrogen and oxygen components. Source: American Chemical Society. Simpler, cheaper way to make liquid methanol fuel using CO2 and sunlight. Most previous methods of producing methanol from carbon dioxide have involved lots of electricity, high pressures and high temperatures, and used toxic chemicals or rare earth elements like cadmium or tellurium. A team of researchers at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) has developed a new method they claim is safer, less expensive, and simpler than current approaches and can be scaled up to an industrial scale to allow some of the CO2 emitted from electrical power plants to be captured and converted into a useful fuel.

The simplest of the alcohol molecules (and poisonous to humans), methanol (CH30H) can be turned into a form of bio-diesel fuel and burned in engines. It is also an important chemical in the production of plastics, adhesives, and solvents. The heart of this technique uses a thermal process to coat copper oxide (CuO) nanowires with another form of copper oxide (Cu2O) and submerging them in a solution rich in carbon dioxide. Source: UT Arlington. Computer model indicates promising new catalyst for generating hydrogen from water. Research conducted at Princeton and Rutgers Universities offers hope of synthetic catalysts that could produce hydrogen from water (Photo: Shutterstock) Hydrogen is often hailed as a promising environmentally-friendly fuel source, but it is also relatively expensive to produce.

However, new research conducted at Princeton University and Rutgers University poses the opportunity to produce hydrogen from water at a lower cost and more efficiently than previously thought possible. The research, led by Princeton chemistry professor Annabella Selloni, takes its inspiration from nature – or more specifically, a bacterium that produces hydrogen from water by using enzymes known as di-iron hydro­ge­nases.
FORDEC. Übersicht[Bearbeiten] FORDEC oder FOR-DEC ist ein Akronym und bezeichnet eine Methode zur strukturierten Entscheidungsfindung, die vor allem in der Luftfahrt angewandt wird. Entwickelt wurde sie von Mitarbeitern des Deutschen Zentrums für Luft- und Raumfahrt mit der Einführung von Crew Resource Management Trainings für Piloten[1] [2].
Silicon nanoparticles could lead to on-demand hydrogen generation. Feature: Small modular nuclear reactors - the future of energy?
This year is an historic one for nuclear power, with the first reactors winning U.S. government approval for construction since 1978.

Some have seen the green lighting of two Westinghouse AP1000 reactors to be built in Georgia as the start of a revival of nuclear power in the West, but this may be a false dawn because of the problems besetting conventional reactors. It may be that when a new boom in nuclear power comes, it won't be led by giant gigawatt installations, but by batteries of small modular reactors (SMRs) with very different principles from those of previous generations.
Inexpensive catalyst for producing hydrogen under real-world conditions found. Australian researchers develop promising new approach to hydrogen storage.

New nanocrystals let solar panels generate electricity ... and hydrogen gas. Panansonic develops world's most efficient artificial photosynthesis system. Nanosheet catalyst brings a hydrogen economy one step closer to reality. Harnessing the power of hydrogen gas presents one of the most promising options available for obtaining a large-scale sustainable energy solution. However, there are numerous and significant challenges present in the production of pure hydrogen, one of the most prominent of which is the high costs associated with the use of rare and expensive chemical elements such as platinum. Accordingly, the team at the Brookhaven National Laboratory set out to create a catalyst with high activity and low costs, that could facilitate the production of hydrogen as a high-density, clean energy source.

The key component in the production of pure hydrogen is one of the most abundant elements on the planet.
Harvard scientists create hydrogen fuel cell that lasts longer. Harvard researchers have developed a solid-oxide fuel cell that doubles as a battery Image Gallery (2 images)
SiGNa receives USAID funding to develop portable hydrogen power. Mitglieder des Managements. Record setting small-scale solid oxide fuel cell could power neighborhoods. Portable fuel cell uses butane to charge gadgets. Solar energy-harvesting “nanotrees” could produce hydrogen fuel on a mass scale - (Private Browsing)
Apple files patents for hydrogen fuel cell technology to power mobile devices. Algal protein provides more efficient way to split water and produce hydrogen. Alternative tech could lead to cheaper fuel cells. Nissan doubles power density with new Fuel Cell Stack. Research demonstrates that activated carbon could store hydrogen at room temperature.

Researchers turn wastewater into “inexhaustible” source of hydrogen. Japanese company lays claim to world's cheapest hydrogen production process. Portable microreactor to produce hydrogen from everyday fossil fuels. Hydrogen generated from sunlight and ethanol. New process allows fuel cells to run on coal. Researchers produce hydrogen from sunlight, water and rust.